By Paul, Katigbak
Senior vice-president, commercial sales, Dell EMC Canada
Today, most organizations – from small businesses to large global enterprises – find themselves in the midst of a digital transformation journey. While at varying stages, these transformations are changing the way we conduct business, and store and manage data.
One area of transformation that is significantly impacted but isn’t being prioritized is cybersecurity. As businesses deploy more devices and shift to public cloud infrastructure, many tend to think about security last.
In fact, a recent RSA study shows that more than a quarter of organizations say implementation of a digital transformation project happens so quickly that there isn’t enough time to assess and implement proper risk management strategies, often resulting in cybersecurity as an afterthought. Security adoption isn’t happening at the same rate as risks are increasing, and with over 350,000 new threats identified each day, it is vital for businesses to understand the evolving threat landscape, what can be done to ward off threats, and what’s next in cybersecurity.
From human error to attacks beneath the OS, corporate data breaches are on the rise as hackers continue to remain one step ahead. By continuously evolving their tactics to compromise systems and endpoints, organizations need to engage a strong defense strategy by prioritizing security from the onset.
As more organizations align their businesses with digital transformation initiatives, they’re encountering new, complex risks that are expanding their attack surface. In order to continue thriving, organizations will also need to provide their employees with the tools and resources they need to keep critical data secure. To overcome the challenges and engage their employees, organizations must embrace a multi-pronged approach to security that encompasses data protection solutions, security education and training for employees, endpoint protection, and secure solutions that enable digital transformation. This includes:
- Providing security training to staff: It is critical that all employees understand why data security is critical at every level and how they are an important part of keeping it secure.
- Risk management: As data continues to grow exponentially, it is essential to leverage a variety of data protection strategies across continuous availability, replication, backup, and archives, creating an effective data protection solution that can scale.
- Security consistency: In order for businesses to be ahead of the curve, they need to make investing in security measures a top priority and proactively address data privacy rather than wait to address it after an attack occurs. This means implementing IT solutions (i.e. laptops, servers, storage) that have security already built in to the foundation.
As new technologies such as AI, IoT, blockchain, and cloud emerge and enhance our lives, we also need to be prepared address the potential threats that will arise. Securing data, protecting and ensuring privacy, preventing fraud, building trust, and safeguarding reputation are key requirements for any organization. And, for those who want to ensure their digital transformation journey is smooth, successful and secure, investing in future-ready security technology, purpose-built data protection and privacy solutions are essential.